BEN'S MAILING INFO FOR CHRISTMAS!!

Ben's Street Address for Letters and Cards is:

Elder Benjamin Johnson

125 67th Street, Apt. #1

West New York, NJ 07093 

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Ben's Address for packages is:

Elder Benjamin Johnson

Morristown New Jersey Mission

1719 Route 10 Suite #309

Parsippany, New Jersey 07054

December 14th, 2009
Hello again everyone,

  This week was super busy with zone meeting, a mission conference, a Christmas brunch at the mission home and a Christmas fireside (the 2nd of 2). It was a sweet week though. For the Christmas brunch we had to all make orniments for President and Sister Bahr to put up on their tree that was something unique to the area or comapnionship. We bent a hanger to say WNY and had a red piece of paper say 60-70 behind it. It's kinda hard to explain but i swear it was pretty nifty.... And "the work may be tough, but we're hangin in there" is the catch phrase for the orniment =D Ya if you couldn't tell a cheesy comment such as that was definitely from the mind of yours truly lol.

Mission conference was awesome, so spiritually powerful. We left so ready to go and preach to the world....Zone meeting had basically the same effect as well. It was a really cool pump up week. Maybe it was due to being carried by the motivating meetings but we did an awesome job of finding new investigators this week....well they fell into our laps rather. 6 new investigators in 5 days. It is a personal record for me....not that numbers matter but its just great to see a new flow of people to teach in the area, cuz a lot of the old fogies just need to either get baptized or we need to drop em. So the 6 new investigators are much needed :)

One cool investigator is Julio, the miracle from last week. We taught him again just yesterday. It seems as if we'll be able to go by every sunday at 4 :) ...But we took Hno Escobar who is from El Salvador as well and we had a nice little lesson about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The only problem with Julio is that he is quiet and not too keen on asking questions from what I can tell....I'll just have to do some work on having him break out of his shell. Which would be like clockwork in english but I'm still a little limited with my spanish skills. I guess we'll see how it ends up working out.

Speaking of spanish skills though.... Elders Taylor and Westover (the Zone Leaders that we live with). Had a baptism on sunday, well 2...it was sweet. But the ward mission leader, who was going to conduct, couldn't make it. So I did. But I had never conducted a meeting before....let alone in a foreign language. It was a bit of an adventure, but i think I pulled it off decently lol. It's kinda crazy to think that I was simply able to do so in spanish when months ago I hardly knew anything at all.

So random lil tid bit, I got this cool granola recipie and i've been experimenting with that lately....its actually way good. I hardly follow the one I was given (it was like candy cuz it had so much sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup and honey) but I'm really likin some of the stuff I've been able to come up with =D

There were a couple of Returned Sister Missionaries that came to visit this week....It was kinda weird to see the one I kinda knew in normal clothes first off lol....but also seems like so much fun to visit your old friends from old areas. It is for sure something i'd love to do with my parents when the time finally comes. We had a nice little party at a members house while they were in town :) ....food is always a winner.

It's crazy to think that Christmas is just right around the corner. It is especially crazy because it's not exactly like we're going into stores everyday hearing Christmas music playing and seeing all the decorations. I swear it still feels like its mid summer and i just left. Time is just slipping right on by though.

Sadly nothing too crazy happened this week....its been nice and cold. Like 20-30's with a nasty wind. My face just like freezes, goes numb and then walking around isn't too bad lol.

Anyways love you all and hope your having a great holiday season!

Love,
Elder Johnson

Golden Contact

Hello everybody...I am officially no longer dreaming of a white Christmas, it is sadly a reality. The first snow of the season finally hit over here. I'll admit, it was pretty intense and kinda cool for a day. But I imagine that from here on out it will be a bit less cool lol.

Anyways the coolest part of this week by far was how we met Julio, one of our brand new investigators... So to give a bit of backstory this week was rather annoying with a ton of juked or last minute cancled appointments =/ ....lemme tell you I wasn't very chipper. But all is well =D ...but anyways, it was after one of these canceled appointments that we had our backup scheduled to go see a potential in a nearby appartment building. So we go in and walk right in. ...Now it has a buzzer door but with a lot of buildings around here they either just dont work or are never locked so we thought nothing of it and walked right in. We tried the potential with no success and started heading back down the stairs to leave...When we got to the buzzer door I went to open it up and it didn't budge. Which seemed curious cuz we walked right in before. It was locked??? So I asked my companion to stay inside while I checked to see if it was locked and we determined that it was indeed locked. And with that we decided that there was a reason why we were in that building...so we knocked it. Now I would love to say this was something along the lines of a giant building with 30 stories that we knocked till our knuckles were bruised. But that would be a lie. It was only about 7-9 rooms. But one of them this ~20 year old guy answered. Julio is his name and minus the distraction of the naked 5 year old standing right next to him we had a normal door contact, and as normal he said he was busy and as normal we asked if there was another time we could come by....and as normal he appeased us and set up a time. And as normal we marked it in our planners and said good bye. And normally this sort of thing happens all the time and they either forget or are "busy" again when we stop by, so I gotta admit I wasn't very stoked about it. It really seemed like nothing special happened. Then came sunday. We went got to the building and with the buzzer door locked this time rang the bell. He let us in....hope?....we start headin up the stairs...hope?... and I was expecting the same old excuse as to why he couldn't meet with us but I was wrong. He was waiting with the door open inviting us in before we even made it all the way up the stairs. We had an awesome lesson and set a return appointment...It is amazing. And it didn't hit me till after the fact, that it was literally a miracle that we got into that building in the first place. Why was it that we managed to walk right in through the locked door?....Coincidence?...I doubt it...It was because the Lord truly provided a way for us, His chosen servants, to find his son, eagerly awaiting the message of the Gospel. Basically ....Elder Alldredge and I both have high hopes for Julio.

...on a far less significant note... Hna. Bautista taught me how to make arepas. And as opposed to last time, I learned like actual measurments of everything. I'm way excited to try them out when I get the chance, cuz they are super tastey =D

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Johnson

FINALLY PICS OF BEN (sent from Elder Davis' mom) Hey Benny - I waaant your camera card for Christmassss!

Ben with his beloved Trainer, Elder Davis
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Elder Davis' last letter to his mom about Ben--
break out the tissue ladies

Elder Johnson.... where to begin! he is so great and the best companion i have had so far, he ALWAYS has a smile on his face and is never discouraged even though he doesnt understand the language fully and when i offer him to teach sometimes he isnt quite sure where to start but he bears such a bold and noble testimony and i can feel the spirit as we teach and testify with unity--it is so amazing!!! I only hope that i can be as a good of an example as he has been to me these past weeks. I have found it so easy to get into the groove of doing "missionary things" and not following the spirit. Everytime this seems to happen though, Elder Johnson comes up with an idea that i dont like--but i know we need to do, and then we do it, and MIRACLES HAPPEN!  it is so great to be being trained even though i am the trainer.



First Baptism in WNY

Service

just a man...but what an Elder...!

Monday Nov. 30, 2009
Hey everyone =D

Hope everyone's thanksgiving went spectacularly mine was quite sweet. It was the 1st full day that i had with my new companion, Elder Alldredge...yes Elder Davis got transfered- off to zone leader actually. And it was a really productive day, well more productive than i expected for the dia de pavo (what most people say for Thanksgiving cuz dia de accion de gracias is a bit of a mouthful). We had an awesome 1pm lunch appointment with the Bautista family (who are great cooks might I add). I was super excited to see what they had in store for us and they had some turkey noodle soup to start, followed by some stuffed turkey breast and a venezualan dish called pan con jamon (bread with ham) where its all cooked inside the really tasty bread and is super delicious. It was sweet and we shared a thought there. Then we had an appointment with a referral....I gotta be honest I figured he accidently told us we could come by on thursday, but he was there! As was his daughter. We taught both William and Erika about the plan of salvation and when we finished up we asked if they had any questions (kinda like always). And William asked where he could learn more! I got soooooooo excited to tell him all about church, which they ended up coming to, and the Book of Mormon. Which, as i explained, are the reasons why we know everything that we do about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation. It was sweet. The night ended with going to eat with the Huacon family... It was way good. A huge bowl of rice, a bunch of turkey, some really good gunk stuff which had turkey, walnuts and a myriad of other things and something that was deep fried and way good. She gave us a bunch to take home too. It was waay sweet.

We had a missionary fireside--basically a christmas music fireside where all the missionaries sing and there are a few talks. It went over really well, but it was off in Morristown (about an hour away) so it kinda knocked out our whole sunday night from teaching, but that's alright. It was a great activity and I'm super excited for the 13th when our next fireside will be in Union City and all of our investigators and Ward members will be able to go =D ....It is crazy to think that Christmas is coming up. It'll be here before we know it. And I'm sure you've all got GIANT boxes that you are just waiting to mail me ;)

Well I think that basically does it for the noteworthy portion of my week... Elders Alldredge and Westover are the new Elders in my appartment. It is weird not having Elders Davis and Gove...   Elder Westover is actually from the Bay Area up in North Cali and knows Josh Rojas (my roommate back off at college) apparently. I dont know Elder Westover's first name but apparently they'd play some basketball or something together here and there back in the day. Small world right?!?

Have a great week everyone!

Till next time,
Elder Johnson

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